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19 million. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:03 | |
The art world. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:04 | |
Glamour, wealth, intrigue. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:08 | |
95. Selling at 95 million. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:11 | |
Beneath the surface, there's a darker place, | 0:00:11 | 0:00:15 | |
a world of high stakes and gambles. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
International art dealer Philip Mould knows the risks. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:24 | |
He hunts down sleepers - | 0:00:24 | 0:00:26 | |
paintings that hide dark secrets. | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
In the past, we looked at pictures. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:31 | |
Now, almost, you can look through them. | 0:00:31 | 0:00:33 | |
Paint almost acts like blood at a crime scene. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
I'm Fiona Bruce, and I have over 20 years' experience as a journalist. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
Every picture tells its own story, | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
and it's up to us to try and uncover it. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:49 | |
We're teaming up to investigate | 0:00:49 | 0:00:51 | |
the human dramas and mysterious tales locked in paint. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:55 | |
It's a world that spans continents. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:01 | |
It can take you anywhere at any moment. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
Less than 24 hours ago, I was in London. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:06 | |
Suddenly, I had to drop everything and fly all the way down here | 0:01:06 | 0:01:10 | |
to Cape Town in South Africa, to pick up a painting that could be | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
by one of the world's great masters, by Rembrandt. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
But whoever's painted it, | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
I do know it has a dark and fascinating history. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:22 | |
Wow, look at the difference now. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:24 | |
Look at that picture now. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:26 | |
This painting will bring us within touching distance | 0:01:26 | 0:01:29 | |
of one of the greatest artists that ever lived. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
It's a bit like a religious ritual, by which you anoint the picture. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:36 | |
It will require an investigation that reaches into the highest ranks of Nazi Germany... | 0:01:36 | 0:01:41 | |
This almost certainly relates to the forced sale of the picture. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
..and test our team to its limits. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:46 | |
This is getting so complicated. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:50 | |
This story began with an excited call from Philip. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:06 | |
I needed to see him at base, quickly. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:10 | |
His head of research, Dr Bendor Grosvenor, was waiting, | 0:02:10 | 0:02:14 | |
and time was not on our side. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
So, why have you got me here in such a hurry? | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
The best way of explaining that is for you to see the picture. Bendor? | 0:02:19 | 0:02:24 | |
This emerged a few days ago. Bendor found it on the computer. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:27 | |
It's a picture coming up for sale in South Africa, in Cape Town. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:31 | |
It looked interesting, so we decided to look into it. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:34 | |
It looked like something that could be a very good spec, | 0:02:34 | 0:02:37 | |
as we say in the trade. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
What caught my eye is this looks like a period painting | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
done almost 400 years ago, but the estimate is only £800. | 0:02:43 | 0:02:47 | |
Which is astonishingly cheap. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
Yes, fantastically cheap for a pretty good picture from the period. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
The second thing that caught my eye is the guy's face. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:57 | |
-I seem to remember I've seen it before somewhere. -You just remembered the look of this chap? | 0:02:57 | 0:03:01 | |
Yes. As a bit of a portrait anorak, I try and remember faces as much as possible. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:06 | |
So I went through some old catalogues. Here he is - | 0:03:06 | 0:03:09 | |
the same sitter, I think, in two paintings by Rembrandt himself. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:13 | |
So you're doing all this to try and show | 0:03:13 | 0:03:15 | |
that that painting up for sale in South Africa | 0:03:15 | 0:03:17 | |
is perhaps not just by a follower of Rembrandt, | 0:03:17 | 0:03:20 | |
-but by Rembrandt himself? -It could be by Rembrandt, but, at the very least, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
we're dealing with a painting that was painted in his circle | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
or possibly in his studio, and maybe by the master himself. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
So, this is an interesting picture, | 0:03:31 | 0:03:34 | |
it's a picture of considerable quality, | 0:03:34 | 0:03:36 | |
but it was in the process of looking into it that a darker side emerged. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:41 | |
Oh? | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
This painting was sold at auction in 1935 in Berlin | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
and it came, it says here, from the Van Diemen Gallery. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:52 | |
The Van Diemen Gallery belonged to the Oppenheimers, | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
and the Oppenheimers were Jews, | 0:03:55 | 0:03:57 | |
forced to flee when the Nazis came to power. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
All of their stock was seized by the Nazis | 0:04:00 | 0:04:02 | |
and placed under the administration of one of Goering's right-hand men | 0:04:02 | 0:04:06 | |
and sold at auction for a fraction of its value. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:10 | |
Ah, I'm beginning to get the idea. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:12 | |
So this painting that is up for sale in South Africa | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
almost certainly is in fact a stolen painting, stolen by the Nazis? | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
Mmm. It's almost certainly what we call a spoliated painting, | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
-which is in effect stolen. -Gosh. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
There's absolutely nothing to suggest at this stage at all | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
that the people who are selling this know about it, | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
nor indeed do the auction house know about its history. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
-How long till this thing goes up for sale? -It's 4:00 now. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:38 | |
-This picture's coming up when, Bendor? -4:00 tomorrow. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:42 | |
-24 hours. -Right. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:44 | |
So we need to find some answers, and fast. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:47 | |
Is the picture in South Africa just a modern copy? | 0:04:47 | 0:04:52 | |
Did it belong to the Oppenheimers? | 0:04:52 | 0:04:54 | |
I'm keen to find out more about them. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
They owned the Van Diemen Gallery that had the picture in the '30s. | 0:04:56 | 0:05:00 | |
Living in Berlin at that time, | 0:05:00 | 0:05:01 | |
Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer would have witnessed the rise of Nazism. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
They fled from Berlin in April 1933 and went to Paris. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:10 | |
I guess they thought they'd be safe there. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:12 | |
But in 1940, Hitler invaded France. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:16 | |
Now, Jakob died in Nice in 1941. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:21 | |
Rosa was sent to a concentration camp. She died at Auschwitz in 1943. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
Somehow, their children survived. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
So, they do have living descendants, | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
who may have a claim on this painting. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
Well, since the 1935 auction, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
the Oppenheimers' pictures have been scattered all over the world. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:43 | |
But early in 2009, | 0:05:43 | 0:05:44 | |
the descendants of the Oppenheimers found three of those paintings. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:48 | |
They were in a museum in California, and the State of California | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
has since decided to return those pictures to the Oppenheimer family. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:55 | |
Here is the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
standing beside two of the descendants, | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
Peter Bloch on the left | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
and Inge Blackshear on the right, | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
at the ceremony when they returned the paintings. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:10 | |
But in this murky world, the laws about returning paintings, | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
or restituting them, as it's known, differ from country to country. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:17 | |
To avoid getting bogged down in the legalities, I need some advice. | 0:06:17 | 0:06:21 | |
Next morning, I visit Anne Webber of the Looted Art Commission in London. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
You would think that things that were stolen, if everybody's agreed | 0:06:24 | 0:06:28 | |
that they were taken under terrible circumstances, | 0:06:28 | 0:06:31 | |
you should be able to get them back wherever they are. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
But no. The justice you get depends on the accident of geography. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:37 | |
The accident of where the work of art has come to rest. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
In this case, we know that there is a lawyer who represents the Oppenheimer family. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:45 | |
She's a French lawyer living in Paris, or working from Paris, | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
and the right thing to do is to contact her, | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
ask her, "Is this painting on your list of missing paintings?" | 0:06:51 | 0:06:55 | |
And then to see what she would like to do about it. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:58 | |
Back at base, we're sending the limited information we have on the painting to the lawyer in Paris. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:04 | |
We can't stop the auction ourselves. We have no claim on the painting, | 0:07:07 | 0:07:12 | |
and with only five hours left till bidding starts, | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
we need to know if she's able to stop the sale. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:19 | |
-'Bonjour.' -Ah, bonjour. Puis-je parler avec Eva Sterzing? | 0:07:22 | 0:07:25 | |
'Yes. Hold the line, please.' | 0:07:25 | 0:07:27 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:07:27 | 0:07:29 | |
My guess is that Eva Sterzing's busy looking into her records. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
She's only had the details for about half an hour, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
so I can hardly expect her to come up with an immediate answer. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
And I bet you she'll be surprised. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
Hello. Is that Eva Sterzing? | 0:07:45 | 0:07:47 | |
Hi, this is Philip Mould. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:49 | |
How are you? | 0:07:49 | 0:07:51 | |
Have you received the information that I've sent you? | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
As I understand it, there is no guarantee, | 0:08:16 | 0:08:19 | |
far from it, that the auction house will withdraw this picture, so... | 0:08:19 | 0:08:23 | |
This is all a bit of a gamble. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:40 | |
Raising questions over the painting's past | 0:08:40 | 0:08:43 | |
could mire it in lengthy legal disputes. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
The owner may dispose of the picture secretly, | 0:08:46 | 0:08:48 | |
so it just disappears from sight. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
It's still showing it for sale, | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
but sometimes these things move quite slowly. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
I wouldn't like to be told that my picture was Nazi booty, would you? | 0:08:57 | 0:09:03 | |
What I'm finding rather frustrating is you and I know that this picture | 0:09:03 | 0:09:07 | |
is considerably more interesting than it appears on the screen. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:11 | |
I still want to get my hands on it. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:13 | |
It's frustrating to wait, knowing there's nothing more we can do. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:19 | |
PHONE RINGS | 0:09:19 | 0:09:22 | |
Hi. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:25 | |
Do you have some news? | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
I'll come through now. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:28 | |
Hi. Just had a call from Rudd's in South Africa, | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
and the picture has been withdrawn. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:36 | |
So the lawyer's letter has clearly had an effect. | 0:09:36 | 0:09:39 | |
Must have done. They didn't give any reasons. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:41 | |
They just said something about an ownership dispute. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
Thankfully, we've managed to stop the auction. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
Now, two questions need answering. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:58 | |
I'm desperate to discover who painted the picture. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:03 | |
Could it be by Rembrandt? | 0:10:03 | 0:10:05 | |
And I want to know who the rightful owner is. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:09 | |
To investigate, we need more than a computer image. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:12 | |
We need the painting itself. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
So, one overnight flight later, here I am in Cape Town. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:18 | |
I've been given permission to take the picture temporarily for testing in Europe. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:23 | |
While I'm here, I can find out more about the painting | 0:10:23 | 0:10:26 | |
and its owner from the auctioneer, Charles Rudd. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:29 | |
-Hi, I'm Fiona Bruce. Charles, I presume. -Yes, welcome to Rudd's. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:33 | |
-Nice to see you. -So, where is it? | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
Right here. Follow me. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
After you. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:42 | |
How exciting. I'm the first one to have a good look at it. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:46 | |
Absolutely. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:47 | |
Well, I have to say, when I saw it on the computer back in London, | 0:10:49 | 0:10:54 | |
I was expecting something smaller, and, actually, not as vivid as this. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
-Yes. -I was worried that I might be slightly unimpressed by it, | 0:10:57 | 0:11:01 | |
but, actually, I think it's rather wonderful. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
Yes. I think it's got a lot of pathos, | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
and I think there's a lot of feeling in it, as a painting. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
Tell me how you came by it, how this painting came to your attention. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
Well, the owner of this painting, | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
we've had dealings with over a couple of years. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:22 | |
He did take about four of his paintings to another auction house, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:26 | |
and two of those paintings were unsold at that auction. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:30 | |
-And this was one of them? -Yes. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:32 | |
And is it because he'd failed to sell it before | 0:11:32 | 0:11:34 | |
-that he put it on at quite a low price? -Yes. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:36 | |
He didn't want the painting back, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:38 | |
and he didn't want them to handle the resale of the painting, | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
so he gave it to us and we came to an agreement | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
to put what we considered a fair estimate | 0:11:44 | 0:11:46 | |
to draw some interest to the painting. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:49 | |
In sterling, it was just about under £1,000, wasn't it? | 0:11:49 | 0:11:51 | |
Yes. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
I'd very much like to meet the owner while I'm here. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:57 | |
Is that going to be possible? | 0:11:57 | 0:11:58 | |
I have asked him whether he would like to attend today, | 0:11:58 | 0:12:01 | |
but, unfortunately, he didn't feel he wanted to. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
And how did he come by the painting? | 0:12:04 | 0:12:06 | |
-He inherited it, did he? -Yes. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
Now, we did know that the owner, Peter Schaary, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
inherited this painting in 1978, and this is written by his father, | 0:12:11 | 0:12:16 | |
"Bequeathed as a gift to my son." The other thing was... | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
I was going to say, that was the first thing I noticed | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
when you turned it round. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:23 | |
-What does this mean? -We're not sure. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
-It looks like a sort of fascist label. -It does, instantly. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
As if it had been in some storage warehouse somewhere. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
-Now that is a bit chilling, isn't it? -Mmm. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
-Philip, it's Fiona. -'Hello. How are you getting on?' | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
Well, I have it in front of me, which is very exciting. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:46 | |
It's much more... It's much richer, it's much more colourful, | 0:12:46 | 0:12:50 | |
it's much more interesting as a painting, to my uneducated eye, | 0:12:50 | 0:12:54 | |
now seeing it in real life. Are there any obvious things | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
I should be looking at before we wrap it up? | 0:12:57 | 0:12:59 | |
'What we do know is, in 1935 when it was measured, | 0:13:01 | 0:13:06 | |
'the dimensions were approximately 52 by 38cm.' | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
Well, it's 51. 50.5... Hang on. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:15 | |
-Charles is very helpfully measuring it. -By 38. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:17 | |
By 38. And you were thinking... | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
-'That's good enough.' -That's good enough, is it? OK. Anything else? | 0:13:20 | 0:13:24 | |
-'Does it have a gold frame?' -It does have a gold frame. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:27 | |
-'Does it look like quite an old frame to you?' -Well... | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
How old would you think it is? | 0:13:30 | 0:13:32 | |
I think this frame may be from the '60s or '70s. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:35 | |
Oh, he thinks it might be from the '60s or '70s. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
'May have lost its original frame. Not a problem. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
'From what you've told me, | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
'it looks a highly likely picture. So in your situation, | 0:13:42 | 0:13:46 | |
'I'd wrap it up and take it home.' | 0:13:46 | 0:13:49 | |
The present owner may not want to meet me, | 0:13:49 | 0:13:51 | |
but it's a good sign that he's willing to entrust the painting to us to undergo investigation. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:57 | |
Well, here it is. Yikes! I'm pretty terrified, actually, | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
about taking this on a plane back overnight. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
Apparently the guy who brought it to the auction house | 0:14:07 | 0:14:09 | |
in the first place, who owns it at the moment, | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
brought it along the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
bouncing around in the back of his Land Rover. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
So who knows? Hopefully, I won't do too bad a job of it. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:21 | |
In Paris, the Oppenheimers' lawyer can give us more information | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
about the possible ownership of the painting. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:34 | |
Eva Sterzing has spent many years battling to find and return the Oppenheimer collection. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
Two years after they fled Germany, their Van Diemen Gallery | 0:14:38 | 0:14:43 | |
was put into liquidation by the Nazis. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
The pictures were sold at knockdown prices | 0:14:46 | 0:14:48 | |
at what's been called Judenauktion, or Jewish auctions. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:52 | |
Thanks to the Nazis, the paintings, including masterpieces by Titian, | 0:14:52 | 0:14:57 | |
Van Dyck and Rubens, passed into new hands. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
They were very well-known art dealers | 0:15:00 | 0:15:04 | |
and they had very fine paintings. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
And then these auctions, which you call Judenauktion... | 0:15:07 | 0:15:12 | |
..they sold all these paintings. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:17 | |
I have got this in my catalogues. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:19 | |
They put a little...little... | 0:15:19 | 0:15:22 | |
..rosa... | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
red stickers like this. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
"Unlimitiert" - without limit. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
Here's one. That's why you call it verschleudern. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
You throw it on the market. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:39 | |
Because in the end, you could buy something for one mark. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:44 | |
That one was restituted a long time ago. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:48 | |
Having spent so many years working to restitute the Oppenheimer estate to its rightful heirs, | 0:15:48 | 0:15:54 | |
Eva has grown to know descendants Peter Bloch and Inge Blackshear as friends. | 0:15:54 | 0:16:00 | |
She is all too aware of how important | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
regaining their inheritance is to them, and to others like them. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:06 | |
I've known them since such a long time and I know how it is important. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:12 | |
Because the Jews were persecuted in Germany, | 0:16:14 | 0:16:19 | |
and persecution means everything. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:23 | |
I saw it with them in California. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
It is very good for them. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
They feel like having been... | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
That it is recognised, the persecution. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:38 | |
Yeah, here it is. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:40 | |
With the picture now withdrawn from the Cape Town sale and on its way back to London, | 0:16:40 | 0:16:46 | |
Eva is keen to reunite her clients with the painting taken in such terrible circumstances. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:51 | |
Whenever you steal something from somebody, you are only satisfied | 0:16:51 | 0:16:56 | |
once the thief is in prison or you get it back, your property. | 0:16:56 | 0:17:01 | |
I'm a little like a detective when I find something. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
It's also fun... | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
to chase art, isn't it? | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
As Fiona arrives back from Cape Town on the red-eye, | 0:17:15 | 0:17:20 | |
I'll be able to get a better idea whether the painting really is, | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
without doubt, the looted picture and not a cheap modern copy. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
-Special delivery. -Welcome back. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:34 | |
-You've got it. -Yes! Here it is. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:38 | |
-I'm so excited. -I know. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:40 | |
I was terrified, carrying this on the plane. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
I always get this rather uncertain feeling at this stage, | 0:17:43 | 0:17:46 | |
when the picture is opened in London. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
It's come from another part of the world. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
It always looks different somehow in the London light. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:55 | |
I'm dying to know what you make of it. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:57 | |
You can't get away from the fact that he still looks like | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
a grumpy old chap standing there, | 0:18:00 | 0:18:02 | |
but it's got a depth that I hadn't appreciated until I saw it. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:05 | |
The moment of truth approaches. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:13 | |
-Here we go. -Are you ready? | 0:18:15 | 0:18:16 | |
Get on with it. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:18 | |
What do you think? | 0:18:21 | 0:18:23 | |
That looks interesting. I have to say I do think that it's a period work. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:28 | |
It's got that sort of gnarled intensity | 0:18:28 | 0:18:30 | |
that you associate with Rembrandt and his circle. | 0:18:30 | 0:18:36 | |
And this looks like a wonderfully-hewn piece of oak, | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
possibly Baltic oak. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:44 | |
Just the sort of thing that one would be looking for | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
for a 17th-century picture. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:49 | |
I think there's a possibility that we can find out who this is by, | 0:18:49 | 0:18:54 | |
but the real thing is, is it the picture that we think it is, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:59 | |
the Oppenheimer picture? | 0:18:59 | 0:19:01 | |
We could put some white spirit on it. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
I don't think we'd damage the picture in so doing. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:11 | |
-White spirit takes off paint. -Nah. Well, it can do, | 0:19:11 | 0:19:15 | |
but not old, solid varnish like this. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
And you're going to do it for me. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
You want me to put this white spirit on this painting, | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
follower of Rembrandt, hundreds of years old? Are you sure? | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
No, this is white spirit. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:28 | |
It's not acetone. It doesn't actually take off the varnish. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:31 | |
Go on, live dangerously. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:33 | |
-Like that? -That's it. -Oh! | 0:19:33 | 0:19:36 | |
Look at the drapery on that. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:38 | |
-Terrifying! -Look at the shadow underneath the drapery, | 0:19:38 | 0:19:41 | |
how the drapery comes forward now. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
Actually, I can see, that is amazing. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
Isn't that better? It's a bit like water when it goes over pebbles. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:50 | |
On a dirty picture like this, you can get a hint, a taste, | 0:19:50 | 0:19:54 | |
of what it might be when it's clean. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:56 | |
'Although I wouldn't advise anyone else trying this, for a minute or two while wet, | 0:19:56 | 0:20:00 | |
'the old varnish becomes transparent, allowing the depth of the painting to shine through.' | 0:20:00 | 0:20:05 | |
We haven't got long, cos it's going to evaporate off. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
-So you've just got to... -Wow. Look at the difference now. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:12 | |
Look at that picture now. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:15 | |
It's like a fish coming out of the water, isn't it? | 0:20:15 | 0:20:19 | |
-Wow. -I mean, you can see that it's a work of some quality, | 0:20:19 | 0:20:22 | |
and definitely has the feel of an early painting. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:26 | |
This painting is definitely holding a lot of secrets. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
But so often in this world, | 0:20:32 | 0:20:34 | |
the back of a picture can tell you more than the front. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:37 | |
Well, that looks like an 18th-century wax collector's seal. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:43 | |
So that tells us, almost certainly, that this isn't a modern fake. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:48 | |
The panel looks right for the period. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:51 | |
It's been chamfered in the right way. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:53 | |
We've got the three quarters here, | 0:20:53 | 0:20:56 | |
and they make this incision into the edge, | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
so you can frame it properly. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
There's also some writing on the frame here. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
-This looks like a German script, doesn't it? -Does it? | 0:21:04 | 0:21:08 | |
How can you tell? | 0:21:08 | 0:21:10 | |
-It says "lieb". "Lieben", or something. -There've been some wonderful moments | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
when we've looked at the back of pictures. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:16 | |
Just as we begin to think we've got some missing art, | 0:21:16 | 0:21:19 | |
we work out the words and it's something like, | 0:21:19 | 0:21:21 | |
"Hang to left of door". | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
Come on, Bendor, what about this? This is what got me excited. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:28 | |
Well, this one is... | 0:21:28 | 0:21:31 | |
It's not very easily discernable at the moment. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
If it was a whopping great big swastika, we'd know more about it. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:39 | |
It has a fascistic air about it. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:41 | |
You're right, because this little thing in the middle, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
this little bundle of sticks tied together, is a fasces, | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
and that was what the early fascists used as a symbol. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
That's where they get the term "fascist" from. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
One always has that element of uncertainty before a picture arrives | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
that you've only known from digital images. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
It's now here, we've seen it, and it's unquestionably old. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:05 | |
Just how old is something that we need to determine. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:10 | |
And it seems to have all the evidence | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
to suggest that it is the Oppenheimers' picture. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:18 | |
To me, it's covered with fingerprints, | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
we just need to read them. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:23 | |
The next place I want to go is here, the Witt Library. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:34 | |
This is the Scotland Yard of the art world | 0:22:34 | 0:22:36 | |
with images and information on over a million pictures. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:41 | |
It was here that Bendor discovered the link between our picture | 0:22:41 | 0:22:45 | |
and the Van Diemen sale. I want Fiona to see that evidence for herself. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:49 | |
Always wanted to do this. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:56 | |
Right, lead on. | 0:22:57 | 0:22:59 | |
In these files are just so many answers. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:03 | |
I mean, it's a bit like with crime scenes. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:05 | |
You have to library all the evidence, | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
library the DNA and then, using it later on, you can establish things. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:12 | |
Any picture that has been in a prominent public collection or an auction or with a dealer | 0:23:12 | 0:23:18 | |
in the last 100 years, the chances are you can find it here. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:22 | |
-Right. -Staggering, really. | 0:23:22 | 0:23:24 | |
God, there's a lot of Rembrandt. New Testament? | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
I love the smell of it, don't you? Sort of leather and... | 0:23:27 | 0:23:30 | |
Kind of musty... | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
Self-portraits, Old Testament etchings... Oh, portraits. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:36 | |
His father and his brother. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:39 | |
Over to you. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:41 | |
This is a fantastic resource. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
I once found a missing link here | 0:23:44 | 0:23:46 | |
that proved a lacklustre landscape was really a Gainsborough. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:50 | |
Just look how many images there are, just for the father. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:54 | |
-And they're all of his dad? -Well, they're purported to be of his dad, | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
-but there's no evidence for that. -Oh, I see. So it could be anybody? | 0:23:57 | 0:24:01 | |
It could be anybody, probably a studio model. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
-That's definitely our chap, isn't it? -This is the same guy. -Yeah. | 0:24:03 | 0:24:07 | |
The set of the eyes, the shape of the nose, and that slightly sort of, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
"How long am I going to have to sit for?" model look. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:14 | |
And Rembrandt would have chosen this chap to paint because he had an interesting face, a lived-in face? | 0:24:14 | 0:24:20 | |
-Yeah. -Is that right? -Yes, absolutely. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:22 | |
Rembrandt was always looking for | 0:24:22 | 0:24:24 | |
different types of human expression, thought and insight. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
-If he found a good face... -He stuck with them. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
A good face is worth having. A lot of would-be Rembrandts. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:33 | |
I'm looking at so many that are similar, I can't remember what ours looks like any more. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:38 | |
-Oh! -Here it is. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:40 | |
Right, OK. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:42 | |
-Talk about incriminating evidence. -This is what Bendor saw. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
Yes. It's one and the same thing, isn't it? | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
"Van Diemen sale, Graupe, Berlin, 26-29 April, 1935." | 0:24:48 | 0:24:51 | |
Isn't it extraordinary? Picture comes up in South Africa, | 0:24:51 | 0:24:55 | |
we here in the Witt Library in London, | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
photograph, ancient information, put it all together. | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
-It's like a trail of clues, isn't it? -Yeah. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:04 | |
Although we know that the painting that was for sale in Cape Town | 0:25:07 | 0:25:11 | |
is definitely the Nazi painting, | 0:25:11 | 0:25:13 | |
there are still many questions to answer. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:16 | |
Hang on, because this says Rembrandt, | 0:25:16 | 0:25:18 | |
and yet the picture in Cape Town | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
is described as being by a follower of Rembrandt. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:23 | |
So how can you tell the difference? | 0:25:23 | 0:25:25 | |
You're asking an absolutely crucial question. It's the difference | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
between the master and a follower or an assistant. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:31 | |
I'll tell you what, we can go to the National Gallery. | 0:25:31 | 0:25:34 | |
There you can see some real Rembrandts. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:36 | |
Rembrandt was the greatest Dutch artist of the 17th century, | 0:25:51 | 0:25:54 | |
a time when Dutch painting was the envy of Europe. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
But while many of his contemporaries excelled in landscapes | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
and still-lives, Rembrandt became famous as a master of the human face. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:07 | |
The National Gallery holds | 0:26:07 | 0:26:09 | |
a wonderful collection of his portraits. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:11 | |
Now, even I recognise this self-portrait. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
Two things jump out at me. He's not flattering himself obviously, is he? | 0:26:20 | 0:26:26 | |
Also, he looks either slightly querulous or very slightly anxious. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:33 | |
I'm not quite sure which it is. But you can see that in his expression. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
Absolutely. That's exactly what makes this a fascinating picture. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:41 | |
It's not obvious. It's not someone laughing or sad or angry. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:46 | |
It teeters on the edge, one feeling teetering into the other. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
It's just incredibly clever. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:51 | |
You can tell a Rembrandt portrait by the superior way | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
he portrays a subject's character and emotion, | 0:26:56 | 0:27:00 | |
with nothing more than inspired brushstrokes. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:03 | |
There's no vagueness in a Rembrandt. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:05 | |
I read that Hitler was a great fan of Rembrandt's, | 0:27:05 | 0:27:09 | |
which is surprising in one sense | 0:27:09 | 0:27:10 | |
in that Rembrandt mixed with and painted a lot of Jewish people. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:14 | |
Why do you think Hitler was such a fan? | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
Because Rembrandt is the ultimate trophy. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:20 | |
I mean, Rembrandt is a by-word for artistic genius. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:23 | |
What he wanted was these bits of booty himself around him | 0:27:23 | 0:27:28 | |
as a form of aggrandisement. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:30 | |
-Take a look at this, Fiona. It's got no label on it. -Right. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:39 | |
Tell me what you think of this. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:41 | |
What, in terms of is it a Rembrandt or not? | 0:27:41 | 0:27:44 | |
Yeah, quality. Is it a Rembrandt? | 0:27:44 | 0:27:47 | |
Oh, God. I don't know. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:50 | |
Well, OK, from what I've learned from the master... | 0:27:50 | 0:27:54 | |
I also could make a complete fool of myself now! | 0:27:55 | 0:28:00 | |
I would say it's not as fine | 0:28:00 | 0:28:03 | |
as the ones we've seen. Even though those are not photographic | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
in the way they portray the faces, they are very clear. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:10 | |
You're going to tell me this is a Rembrandt, aren't you? | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
When I'm saying it doesn't particularly look like a Rembrandt. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:17 | |
-I can reveal to you it is not a Rembrandt. -Ooh! | 0:28:17 | 0:28:20 | |
-But it was thought to be a Rembrandt. -Oh, right. OK. | 0:28:20 | 0:28:22 | |
It was demoted in the 1960s. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:25 | |
But it's very difficult, because you can't just say, | 0:28:25 | 0:28:28 | |
"It's got the right paint and it's from the right period | 0:28:28 | 0:28:30 | |
"and this is the sort of subject he does." There are subtle differences | 0:28:30 | 0:28:34 | |
in the quality of the handwriting, as it were. | 0:28:34 | 0:28:36 | |
If it was originally thought that this was a Rembrandt, | 0:28:36 | 0:28:39 | |
it's possible that this came from the studio of Rembrandt, | 0:28:39 | 0:28:43 | |
-from one of his pupils, is it? -Yeah. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:46 | |
He had around him a group of people, assistants, pupils if you want, | 0:28:46 | 0:28:50 | |
people who would actually, as he worked on a picture, | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
quite often sit around and do the same model, the same object. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:57 | |
Rembrandt could do it from one angle | 0:28:57 | 0:28:59 | |
and two or three other people could do it from other angles. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:02 | |
He had a sort of industry going on. | 0:29:02 | 0:29:03 | |
-These were apprentices, effectively? -Apprentices, pupils, yes. | 0:29:03 | 0:29:07 | |
These were people who could also supply pictures which he could sell. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:10 | |
So you could get a copy of a Rembrandt | 0:29:10 | 0:29:12 | |
or you could get an original Rembrandt. | 0:29:12 | 0:29:14 | |
With Philip eager to uncover the mysteries of our painting, | 0:29:22 | 0:29:26 | |
I want to learn more about how art was systematically looted | 0:29:26 | 0:29:31 | |
by the Nazis in the years before the Second World War. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:36 | |
As well as housing an impressive array of machines to excite the imagination of any schoolboy, | 0:29:42 | 0:29:49 | |
the Imperial War Museum holds a wealth of rare archive film | 0:29:49 | 0:29:54 | |
that documents the rise of Nazism | 0:29:54 | 0:29:56 | |
from the days before our painting was looted. | 0:29:56 | 0:29:58 | |
Archive that historian James Taylor has arranged to show me. | 0:29:58 | 0:30:03 | |
This is a crowd listening to the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, | 0:30:09 | 0:30:14 | |
who is announcing a one-day boycott of Jewish shops throughout the country | 0:30:14 | 0:30:19 | |
and the intention was that this would stop non-Jewish people buying from Jewish shopkeepers. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:25 | |
-Gosh. And when was this? -The end of March 1933. | 0:30:25 | 0:30:28 | |
March 31st to be specific. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:30 | |
So this is only two months since Adolf Hitler's become Chancellor. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:34 | |
-He didn't waste any time, did he? -No, absolutely not. | 0:30:34 | 0:30:37 | |
And this is the beginning of the creeping and increasing legislation | 0:30:37 | 0:30:43 | |
against the Jews as Hitler became more powerful. | 0:30:43 | 0:30:47 | |
Yes. I mean, I think the key years are really 1935 | 0:30:47 | 0:30:52 | |
when the Reich citizenship law is brought in | 0:30:52 | 0:30:55 | |
and that effectively makes Jews second-class citizens. | 0:30:55 | 0:30:59 | |
Then they turn their attention wholesale | 0:30:59 | 0:31:02 | |
to the possessions of Jews. The focus of Nazi antisemitic law | 0:31:02 | 0:31:07 | |
is to force Jews to emigrate. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:08 | |
The irony of that is that they actually put obstacles in their path, | 0:31:08 | 0:31:12 | |
one of which was that they weren't allowed to take their assets with them. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:16 | |
So they insisted that all Jewish artworks, | 0:31:16 | 0:31:21 | |
shares and bonds be declared. It was either taken forcibly | 0:31:21 | 0:31:25 | |
or, after the Jews were deported, then the property was taken. | 0:31:25 | 0:31:31 | |
Not all Jews were as wealthy as Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer, | 0:31:34 | 0:31:37 | |
with the funds to buy expensive paintings, | 0:31:37 | 0:31:41 | |
but it's estimated that, by the end of the war, | 0:31:41 | 0:31:44 | |
one third of all the world's art treasures had been looted by the Nazis. | 0:31:44 | 0:31:48 | |
Paintings by Da Vinci, Raphael and others adorned the walls of the Nazi leaders. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:53 | |
When it came to art, were there Nazis who were particularly interested in it per se? | 0:31:53 | 0:31:59 | |
Well, Goering, most famously, | 0:31:59 | 0:32:02 | |
is the person who was interested in art. Hitler, of course... | 0:32:02 | 0:32:05 | |
-Was a watercolourist. -That's right. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:07 | |
And he wanted to establish certainly a kind of Fuhrer museum. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:11 | |
But it's also worth pointing out | 0:32:11 | 0:32:13 | |
that they were very particular about the type of art that they wanted. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:17 | |
Anything that they considered degenerate - | 0:32:17 | 0:32:19 | |
which was, generally speaking modernist art - was destroyed. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:23 | |
I think it's fascinating and horrifying in equal measure | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
to see quite how systematically the Nazis stripped away | 0:32:33 | 0:32:36 | |
everything from the Jews that made them human, really. | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
I hadn't realised the Nazis were so keen to force the Jews to emigrate. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:43 | |
I didn't realise that was part of their master plan. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:46 | |
Of course, the Oppenheimers in '33 left Germany, they did emigrate. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:50 | |
They had to leave everything behind, including their painting. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:54 | |
A painting Bendor has news of back at base. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:58 | |
Well, Anne Webber from the Commission for Looted Art in Europe has been in touch. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:02 | |
She and her team have made the most fantastic discovery. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:05 | |
Our picture was listed by the Nazis in 1934 | 0:33:05 | 0:33:09 | |
as a work of national treasure, | 0:33:09 | 0:33:11 | |
which meant that it couldn't be exported from the country | 0:33:11 | 0:33:14 | |
and Anne and her team have kindly sent us a copy of the list from a few years later in 1938. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:20 | |
Here it is. It's the second picture down, artist Rembrandt on the left | 0:33:20 | 0:33:25 | |
and then "Bildnis seines Vaters in Pantasietracht". | 0:33:25 | 0:33:28 | |
It means, basically, portrait of the father in fancy dress. | 0:33:28 | 0:33:31 | |
And you can see all these pictures are by Rembrandt van Rijn. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:36 | |
And this is extraordinary. | 0:33:36 | 0:33:38 | |
I'm just trying to keep up with what this means. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:40 | |
-They thought it was a Rembrandt... -Indeed, yes. -..and as a Rembrandt, | 0:33:40 | 0:33:44 | |
was of national importance to the heritage... | 0:33:44 | 0:33:46 | |
This puts a whole different historical slant on it. | 0:33:46 | 0:33:49 | |
It moves from albeit an important old master picture to a national treasure. | 0:33:49 | 0:33:55 | |
I mean, whatever the picture is, whatever we catalogue it as now, | 0:33:55 | 0:33:59 | |
whoever painted this, this was, in its day, something of supreme importance. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
Obviously in their day, they were pretty convinced it was by Rembrandt, | 0:34:03 | 0:34:06 | |
otherwise they wouldn't have catalogued it as a national treasure, I assume. | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
-Yes. -So we really do need to find out who it's by. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:13 | |
If we can find out who painted our picture, | 0:34:16 | 0:34:18 | |
then we can also get closer to a fair valuation for its owners. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:23 | |
So I've come to Amsterdam where Rembrandt lived from 1639 onwards. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:29 | |
So why am I here in Amsterdam? | 0:34:31 | 0:34:33 | |
I'm here to see probably the greatest Rembrandt connoisseur of our times, Ernst Van de Wetering. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:38 | |
As chairman of the Rembrandt Research Project, he knows more about Rembrandt than anybody else alive. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:44 | |
If he says your unknown 17th-century canvas is by Rembrandt, | 0:34:44 | 0:34:48 | |
it could be worth £25 million, let's say. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
If not, just a few thousand dollars. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:54 | |
This man's got the power of a Roman emperor. | 0:34:54 | 0:34:57 | |
So, here it is. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:05 | |
'Ernst has so much knowledge and experience, he may well be able to give an instant opinion.' | 0:35:05 | 0:35:12 | |
The first response is that it is... | 0:35:21 | 0:35:23 | |
..a 17th-century painting. | 0:35:25 | 0:35:28 | |
But the question is, is the painting made by Rembrandt? | 0:35:28 | 0:35:32 | |
The answer is no, because it's not signed. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:37 | |
-It's as simple as that, is it? -It is very simple. | 0:35:37 | 0:35:40 | |
The technique is similar, very similar. Judging from the technique, | 0:35:40 | 0:35:46 | |
it must have been done in his studio | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
and he must have seen it, this painting. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:53 | |
Each studio had its own paint recipes. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:57 | |
I wouldn't say there were buckets of paint where they picked paint from, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
but in his Rembrandt school, they used the same matter | 0:36:01 | 0:36:06 | |
and the behaviour of the matter was comparable. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:09 | |
Some of it flows easily, | 0:36:09 | 0:36:11 | |
other paint drags over the surface and behaves in a specific way. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:17 | |
So what I see here, you could also see on a Rembrandt. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:21 | |
'So the painting is not by Rembrandt, but it's definitely connected to the great man. | 0:36:22 | 0:36:28 | |
'With the help of Ernst and the team he works with, we can still find out who painted this picture. | 0:36:28 | 0:36:33 | |
'Applying state-of-the-art techniques, step by step, | 0:36:35 | 0:36:38 | |
'they can delve deeper and deeper into the creation of our painting.' | 0:36:38 | 0:36:43 | |
I think it's best we start with the head and from there we can orient ourselves more easily. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:48 | |
'An infrared camera will allow us | 0:36:48 | 0:36:50 | |
'to look beneath the surface of the painting | 0:36:50 | 0:36:53 | |
'and see the artist's preparation, known as the reserve.' | 0:36:53 | 0:36:57 | |
There is...around the feather, | 0:36:59 | 0:37:03 | |
you see the shape | 0:37:03 | 0:37:05 | |
making a reserve for a wider feather than you see now on the painting. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:09 | |
This is most probably a change in the conception of the painting. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:13 | |
-That's thrilling. Like a poet missing a line and then adding one. -Yes, yes. | 0:37:13 | 0:37:19 | |
But look at this hat. I mean, this hat was once enormous. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:22 | |
Look at the edge there. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:23 | |
It looks like one of those great big, floppy Rembrandt hats. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:27 | |
Yeah, it could be. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:29 | |
Or, I mean, the turban. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
You would expect a turban, but he gets a very small cap. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:39 | |
But it may have been a different shape originally. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:42 | |
So what we're seeing is an artist trying to find an artistic solution. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:48 | |
-Yes. -In other words, an original painting and not a copy. | 0:37:48 | 0:37:52 | |
Yes, we can be sure about that. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:54 | |
'Already, our picture is revealing its past. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:58 | |
'It shows an artist changing his mind whilst painting. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:01 | |
'So it's an original work. | 0:38:01 | 0:38:03 | |
'A copy would not have these tell-tale signs beneath the surface. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
'But we need more investigation to find out who it's actually by. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:11 | |
'So it's now in the expert hands of Martin Bijl | 0:38:11 | 0:38:16 | |
'who's a restorer extraordinaire. | 0:38:16 | 0:38:18 | |
'I'm intrigued by a series of faint marks at the bottom of the picture. | 0:38:18 | 0:38:23 | |
'Could it be a signature? His trained eye might just be able to find it. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:26 | |
'If it exists, it could reveal what we're eager to know.' | 0:38:26 | 0:38:30 | |
Now, Martin, I've got to ask you, | 0:38:32 | 0:38:34 | |
can you make out anything in the bottom left-hand corner? | 0:38:34 | 0:38:38 | |
Is there a possible signature? | 0:38:38 | 0:38:42 | |
I've just had a first look at it | 0:38:42 | 0:38:45 | |
and it ends with a date - 1639 or 1635. | 0:38:45 | 0:38:52 | |
But then before this date, something is written | 0:38:52 | 0:38:56 | |
and that's partly over-painted. | 0:38:56 | 0:39:00 | |
-Mm-hmm. -That suggests that somebody painted over the signature | 0:39:00 | 0:39:05 | |
without knowing what he did. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:08 | |
He didn't even paint over everything because... | 0:39:08 | 0:39:11 | |
..one or two centimetres before, | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
there is also the remains of a signature which is not retouched. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:19 | |
So there is more, | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
and I think we only can confirm by looking through a microscope | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
because the over-paintings are too thick and too opaque. | 0:39:25 | 0:39:29 | |
It's a bit of a muddle, isn't it? | 0:39:30 | 0:39:32 | |
Yeah. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:34 | |
That's why restorers like to clean this kind of picture | 0:39:34 | 0:39:38 | |
because we want to reveal these problems. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:41 | |
'The Amsterdam experts will continue their investigations, | 0:39:41 | 0:39:44 | |
'confident that we can put a name to its creator.' | 0:39:44 | 0:39:48 | |
This compelling, and it is compelling, process of attribution | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
that's going on all around me is central to our world. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
It's a bit like a religious ritual, by which the painting gets anointed. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:06 | |
It's only by knowing when something was painted | 0:40:06 | 0:40:10 | |
or, best of all, who painted it, | 0:40:10 | 0:40:12 | |
that art historians have got something to grab onto, to hold onto. | 0:40:12 | 0:40:16 | |
People who buy pictures will take out cheques and sign them when they've got that. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:21 | |
It's riveting. The picture itself hasn't changed physically at all. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:26 | |
But already it's growing in stature | 0:40:26 | 0:40:28 | |
from the follower of Rembrandt that was at auction for just £1,000. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:32 | |
With the painting yielding more and more secrets to Philip, | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
I'm keen to uncover just how far Nazi looting spread. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:48 | |
When Europe was liberated after the war, | 0:40:49 | 0:40:52 | |
Goering's personal stash of looted art was discovered. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:55 | |
A multi-million-pound haul that read like a Who's Who of the greats of the art world. | 0:40:55 | 0:41:00 | |
But we've barely found the tip of the iceberg. | 0:41:00 | 0:41:04 | |
So much was stolen that it's estimated that art worth up to £20 billion remains missing. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:10 | |
And the Nazis stole art not just from the Jews | 0:41:10 | 0:41:13 | |
but from anyone they considered to be an enemy of the state. | 0:41:13 | 0:41:17 | |
Adam Zamoyski is trying to locate items taken from his Polish grandmother's art gallery. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:22 | |
He wants to recover them to create a public museum for Poland to be proud of. | 0:41:22 | 0:41:27 | |
The Nazis behaved completely differently in Poland | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
to the way they behaved anywhere else - | 0:41:30 | 0:41:32 | |
in Belgium or France or anywhere else. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:35 | |
They were determined to destroy the Polish upper classes and intelligentsia anyway, | 0:41:35 | 0:41:42 | |
but they also confiscated everything. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:45 | |
All Polish property was simply liable to confiscation. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:49 | |
So the Germans started sending these things to different places | 0:41:49 | 0:41:53 | |
because they had their great plans for the Fuhrer's museum in Linz | 0:41:53 | 0:41:57 | |
and then Goering took a few | 0:41:57 | 0:41:59 | |
and the frightful governor of Poland, Hans Frank, | 0:41:59 | 0:42:03 | |
had in his bedroom that Raphael. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:04 | |
-So this was in your family museum? -That's right. -And the Nazis took it? | 0:42:04 | 0:42:08 | |
Yes. It's thought to be a self-portrait by Raphael and disappeared without trace. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:14 | |
-And this is all you've got? A black and white image? -Exactly. | 0:42:14 | 0:42:18 | |
-And you've no idea where it is? -No. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:20 | |
Every single lead has been chased up. | 0:42:20 | 0:42:22 | |
It's probably the most valuable looted object still out there from the Second World War. | 0:42:22 | 0:42:27 | |
Of all of them. Really? | 0:42:27 | 0:42:30 | |
So several millions, I imagine. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:32 | |
Oh, hundreds of millions. | 0:42:32 | 0:42:34 | |
I mean, you know, there wouldn't be a museum in the western world | 0:42:34 | 0:42:38 | |
that wouldn't do anything to get hold of it. | 0:42:38 | 0:42:42 | |
Bite your arm off to have it. | 0:42:42 | 0:42:44 | |
I see it as a personal duty to try and reconstitute these collections | 0:42:44 | 0:42:49 | |
and to make them available because it was put together by ancestors | 0:42:49 | 0:42:53 | |
whom I actually rather admire and who I'm, sort of, quite fond of. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:59 | |
But, also, I see it almost as a moral duty to the people of Poland. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:05 | |
'In Amsterdam, I'm hoping that pigment expert Karin Groen | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
'will be able to get closer to an attribution. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:16 | |
'Is that a signature in the bottom left-hand corner? | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
'Under her microscopic scrutiny, a dark secret begins to emerge.' | 0:43:19 | 0:43:25 | |
I started with these larger retouchings | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
in what could be a signature, | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
but then when we move on, one can see that also what... | 0:43:32 | 0:43:37 | |
..could be numbers... | 0:43:38 | 0:43:41 | |
The 6 was mentioned and a 3. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
Yes, I've always assumed that was the date. | 0:43:43 | 0:43:46 | |
Yeah, but they seem to have been made in paint used for retouching. | 0:43:46 | 0:43:50 | |
So later, I think. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:52 | |
Ah. So you're telling me that your microscope tells you | 0:43:52 | 0:43:56 | |
-that the whole signature is added, the whole date, everything? -Yeah. | 0:43:56 | 0:44:00 | |
That sounds like a rather clear conclusion then, doesn't it? | 0:44:00 | 0:44:04 | |
-Bit disappointing. -I'd love to have a look down the lens myself. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:07 | |
-I don't disbelieve you for a moment. -It's bang in the middle here. | 0:44:07 | 0:44:12 | |
Oh, crikey, I see what you mean. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:16 | |
I've seen this so many times before | 0:44:16 | 0:44:19 | |
but not quite as graphically as this. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:21 | |
-There's a sort of smeary, dishonest layer above, isn't there? -Yeah. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:26 | |
Above what? | 0:44:26 | 0:44:28 | |
The paint looks really different. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:30 | |
-Really different. -Kind of smeary. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:32 | |
And then as I pass it along... | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
to where the date is, the date is the same smeary paint. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
-Mm. -There's so signature here at all, is there, really? | 0:44:42 | 0:44:45 | |
-Well, no evidence of one. -No. | 0:44:45 | 0:44:47 | |
So any hopes of identifying the painting by signature have foundered. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:53 | |
It was added later, maybe in the 19th century, | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
possibly in an effort to pass it off as a Rembrandt. | 0:44:56 | 0:44:59 | |
It is great that we're finding out more and more about the painting now | 0:45:06 | 0:45:10 | |
but my research has thrown up a disturbing new revelation | 0:45:10 | 0:45:14 | |
which is there is a second claim on this picture now. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:19 | |
We knew already the Oppenheimers. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:21 | |
They ran the Van Diemen Gallery, it was liquidated by the Nazis. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:25 | |
But the painting then passed to a bank | 0:45:25 | 0:45:27 | |
as part repayment of a loan that had been made earlier to the Oppenheimers. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:32 | |
Now that bank was Jewish and its assets were then seized by the Nazis | 0:45:32 | 0:45:38 | |
and among those assets was our painting. | 0:45:38 | 0:45:42 | |
That bank no longer exists, | 0:45:42 | 0:45:44 | |
but its heirs are saying that they too now have a claim on our picture. | 0:45:44 | 0:45:49 | |
It's a very confusing situation. | 0:45:49 | 0:45:53 | |
Who owns this picture? And how commonly do situations like this occur with claim and counter-claim? | 0:45:53 | 0:45:59 | |
I've called in Anne Webber from the Looted Art Commission. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:02 | |
If a painting belonged to an art dealer, | 0:46:04 | 0:46:06 | |
the art dealers in Germany were put under enormous pressure by the Nazis once they came to power. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:11 | |
Really, by 1935, Jewish art dealers weren't allowed to practise in Germany. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:17 | |
So you might have a situation where an art dealer took out a loan from a bank | 0:46:17 | 0:46:23 | |
and then the collateral for that loan might have been works of art | 0:46:23 | 0:46:28 | |
and then the loan is called in because of the art dealer being put under so much pressure. | 0:46:28 | 0:46:33 | |
The loan is called in so the art works go to the bank. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
The bank itself may have been Jewish-owned | 0:46:36 | 0:46:38 | |
and then subsequently that bank may have been seized by the Nazis or liquidated or Aryanised, taken over, | 0:46:38 | 0:46:44 | |
and that painting at that point belonged to the bank and it was then seized from them. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:49 | |
In over 60-70 years, it might be lost in the mists of time who is the rightful owner. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:56 | |
Because there were so many waves of dispossession by the Nazis, | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
you really have to unpick all that | 0:47:00 | 0:47:02 | |
and unravel all these different discriminatory measures that were taken | 0:47:02 | 0:47:06 | |
to try and understand who exactly was the owner of the painting. | 0:47:06 | 0:47:09 | |
So yes, you could have a situation where two different people | 0:47:09 | 0:47:13 | |
believe themselves to be the owner, for good reason. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:17 | |
Back in Amsterdam, we're reaching the final stages of our forensic research | 0:47:21 | 0:47:25 | |
and the last step is often the most revealing. | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
An X-ray image of our painting shows the artist's original sketch. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
The contrast between his first sketch and the finished painting | 0:47:31 | 0:47:37 | |
may take us closer to understanding just who that artist was. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:42 | |
The technique is very similar to what we know from Rembrandt, except that Rembrandt was more outspoken. | 0:47:42 | 0:47:47 | |
You see the contrast, much stronger. | 0:47:47 | 0:47:50 | |
This is painted rather meek. It's very carefully done. | 0:47:50 | 0:47:55 | |
A sort of cowardly Rembrandt, | 0:47:55 | 0:47:56 | |
-but someone who knows Rembrandt nonetheless. -Yes, yes. | 0:47:56 | 0:48:00 | |
I wouldn't say coward, but insecure. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:03 | |
A young boy of, we'll say, 17 or 18 years who works in his style. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:08 | |
Sounds as though you're homing in. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:09 | |
Yes. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:11 | |
'The team have completed their studies. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:15 | |
'Now it's up to Ernst to try and pull it all together | 0:48:15 | 0:48:18 | |
'and tell us just who this painting is by.' | 0:48:18 | 0:48:22 | |
My personal opinion is that the painting is very close to Isaac De Jouderville. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:32 | |
Isaac De Jouderville, the pupil of... | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
Isaac De Jouderville was a pupil of Rembrandt's | 0:48:35 | 0:48:38 | |
from, say, already 1627, '28, '29. | 0:48:38 | 0:48:43 | |
One should always be careful here. | 0:48:46 | 0:48:50 | |
The name of Jouderville may cover two or three young men. I mean... | 0:48:50 | 0:48:56 | |
..the pupils of Rembrandt do not have a very... | 0:48:58 | 0:49:02 | |
..stamped style of their own, er, | 0:49:03 | 0:49:06 | |
and so there may be different individuals | 0:49:06 | 0:49:10 | |
which we have made into one individual | 0:49:10 | 0:49:14 | |
because there is enough connection from one painting to the other | 0:49:14 | 0:49:18 | |
and so we call them Jouderville. | 0:49:18 | 0:49:21 | |
Once we focus in on the master, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:23 | |
what is not by him | 0:49:23 | 0:49:26 | |
is treated less exact as Rembrandt himself. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:31 | |
So, when I say it's Jouderville, it comes close to a number of paintings | 0:49:31 | 0:49:37 | |
which we attribute, at this moment, to Jouderville. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:41 | |
We have a result. The committee has decided. | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
Not only have we established that this is now one and the same picture | 0:49:52 | 0:49:57 | |
that was spoliated or force-sold by the Nazis in the 1930s, | 0:49:57 | 0:50:01 | |
but we now have a firm attribution. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:03 | |
A picture that was formerly called "follower of Rembrandt", which frankly means nothing, | 0:50:03 | 0:50:09 | |
is now by Isaac De Jouderville, the orphan pupil of Rembrandt himself. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:14 | |
It's now from his time by a firm name. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:18 | |
The emperor has spoken. | 0:50:18 | 0:50:21 | |
With our attribution work finished, we'll have to return the painting to Rudd's auction house in Cape Town. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:30 | |
But first it's back to London to tell the others the news. | 0:50:30 | 0:50:34 | |
With this new information, I reckon the painting, | 0:50:34 | 0:50:37 | |
which we found for sale for just £1,000, | 0:50:37 | 0:50:40 | |
is now worth closer to 20,000. But who was Isaac De Jouderville? | 0:50:40 | 0:50:44 | |
Well, he's probably best known | 0:50:44 | 0:50:46 | |
for being one of Rembrandt's very first pupils | 0:50:46 | 0:50:49 | |
and, in fact, I've got a painting here | 0:50:49 | 0:50:51 | |
which is thought to be one of his early self-portraits. | 0:50:51 | 0:50:55 | |
He joined Rembrandt's studio as an apprentice | 0:50:55 | 0:50:59 | |
when he was about 16 years old in 1629. | 0:50:59 | 0:51:02 | |
For that privilege, he would have had to pay Rembrandt about 100 Dutch guilders every year. | 0:51:02 | 0:51:08 | |
We know all this information because De Jouderville was an orphan | 0:51:08 | 0:51:11 | |
and we have copies of the receipts between Rembrandt and De Jouderville's guardians. | 0:51:11 | 0:51:15 | |
As an apprentice, | 0:51:15 | 0:51:16 | |
he would have been in the studio doing everything from mixing paints | 0:51:16 | 0:51:20 | |
to learning how to paint and draw. | 0:51:20 | 0:51:22 | |
-And clearly not paying a lot of attention to his hair. -No! | 0:51:22 | 0:51:25 | |
He was pretty cool for the 1630s, I think. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:28 | |
In the studio, the way you learned your trade was effectively by making copies of the master's work. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:34 | |
This is thought to be by Jouderville, and here the Rembrandt which De Jouderville copied. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:39 | |
And the sharp-eyed of you will notice that there's no dog | 0:51:39 | 0:51:42 | |
-in De Jouderville's picture because... -Did you notice that? | 0:51:42 | 0:51:45 | |
I think even I might have spotted that. | 0:51:45 | 0:51:49 | |
Rembrandt added his later, after De Jouderville made the copy. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:53 | |
I hope you're also seeing that the pose in this copy by Jouderville | 0:51:53 | 0:51:57 | |
is exactly the same as that of our picture. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:01 | |
Oh, yes. So it is, yes. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:03 | |
So what we've got here is not only | 0:52:03 | 0:52:05 | |
an important discovery of a new picture by De Jouderville, | 0:52:05 | 0:52:09 | |
but a fascinating piece of evidence as to how Rembrandt's studio system worked. | 0:52:09 | 0:52:15 | |
You can imagine De Jouderville in the studio | 0:52:15 | 0:52:17 | |
and when Rembrandt is using this model for his own paintings, | 0:52:17 | 0:52:20 | |
De Jouderville's in the corner, doing his own pictures himself. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:23 | |
So that would affect the value of our painting? | 0:52:23 | 0:52:26 | |
Most certainly. An attribution is very important. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:29 | |
It's like waving a magic wand over a picture. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:32 | |
-It turns from the anonymous to the identifiable. -It's all very exciting, | 0:52:32 | 0:52:37 | |
but I have to throw a bit of a spanner in the works because there is a counter-claim to this painting. | 0:52:37 | 0:52:42 | |
A Jewish family who owned a bank at the time of the Second World War, | 0:52:42 | 0:52:48 | |
they lent money to the Oppenheimer family back in the '30s, | 0:52:48 | 0:52:52 | |
and they are now claiming this painting, among others, | 0:52:52 | 0:52:56 | |
-as collateral for that loan, all that time ago. -How extraordinary. | 0:52:56 | 0:53:00 | |
This is getting more and more complicated. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:02 | |
Mind you, the whole thing might be academic. | 0:53:02 | 0:53:04 | |
The owner might not be prepared to relinquish hold of the picture. He might want to hang on to it. | 0:53:04 | 0:53:09 | |
-In which case no-one else can have it. -In which case no-one can. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
But we've got to go back to Cape Town, to return the picture. | 0:53:12 | 0:53:15 | |
-I've spoken to the owner, Peter Schaary. -Oh, right? -And he's agreed to meet us. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:19 | |
So why not, at that meeting, try and establish what he has in mind? | 0:53:19 | 0:53:23 | |
Whatever Mr Schaary decides, | 0:53:23 | 0:53:25 | |
the new claim is likely to prolong the ownership dispute. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
So it's back to Cape Town to return the painting to the auction house | 0:53:29 | 0:53:33 | |
and a chance for us to meet the mysterious Mr Schaary. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
Beautiful, sunny Cape Town. Have you been to Cape Town before, Philip? | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
I haven't. I must say, I absolutely adore it. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:44 | |
And just over there... | 0:53:44 | 0:53:46 | |
is where our whole story began, in Rudd's Auctioneers. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:51 | |
What a journey that painting's been on. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
We're meeting Peter Schaary who owns this painting. What's he like? | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
I had a brief chat with him on the phone from Namibia. He sounds like a very reasonable guy. | 0:53:57 | 0:54:02 | |
I'm wondering, you know, given that this painting was sold in the Van Diemen sale, | 0:54:02 | 0:54:08 | |
are there Nazi antecedents in his past, in his family? Is that how he got hold of the painting? | 0:54:08 | 0:54:13 | |
-I'm fascinated by all that. -You can ask him that! | 0:54:13 | 0:54:16 | |
What, you don't want to? I don't mind. I'll ask him. | 0:54:16 | 0:54:19 | |
-Shall we go? -Let's go. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:20 | |
'We've already sent Mr Schaary news of what we've been able to find out | 0:54:23 | 0:54:27 | |
'about the painting's place in art history. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
'So what can he tell us about the man who owned it, his grandfather?' | 0:54:30 | 0:54:35 | |
-Hello, Mr Schaary. -Hello. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:37 | |
-Fiona Bruce, very nice to meet you. Hello there. -Hi, Philip Mould. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:40 | |
Very nice to meet you, having spoken to you on the phone. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:43 | |
-Yes. Thank you very much for coming. -A huge pleasure. | 0:54:43 | 0:54:47 | |
'My grandfather was in Berlin in the '20s and '30s. He was a lawyer. | 0:54:47 | 0:54:52 | |
'He was a very influential man.' | 0:54:52 | 0:54:54 | |
If your grandfather was a lawyer before the war, | 0:54:54 | 0:54:57 | |
what did he do during the war? | 0:54:57 | 0:54:59 | |
I remember he had a uniform, but he was not in the war. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
Was your grandfather a Nazi? That's what I'm getting at. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:06 | |
No. My grandfather... | 0:55:06 | 0:55:07 | |
I would say no because, like I said, he was a businessman. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:14 | |
He was lucky in business and in private, I think. | 0:55:14 | 0:55:19 | |
He had enough funds... | 0:55:19 | 0:55:22 | |
in his life to... | 0:55:22 | 0:55:23 | |
..put up pictures in his house in Johannesburg | 0:55:26 | 0:55:30 | |
when I was, my goodness, I was 13 going on 14. | 0:55:30 | 0:55:36 | |
There was a Frans Hals and there was a Vermeer. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:39 | |
A Frans Hals and a Vermeer? | 0:55:39 | 0:55:41 | |
-Yes. -Owned by your grandfather? -Yes. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:44 | |
We traced this picture back - which is what piqued our interest - | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
back to 1935, the Van Diemen sale, which of course was a sale | 0:55:47 | 0:55:51 | |
of much art that had been kind of appropriated from Jewish families. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:56 | |
-Yes, yes. -So did your grandfather not buy it from that sale? -No, no. | 0:55:56 | 0:56:00 | |
My grandfather surely couldn't have bought it, | 0:56:00 | 0:56:04 | |
knowingly, that it was somebody else's, you know. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:09 | |
For that he had too high standing. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:11 | |
He couldn't do that for himself and he wouldn't have done it | 0:56:11 | 0:56:16 | |
because he was a very generous person all his life. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:19 | |
I suppose the question now is what are you going to do with it? | 0:56:19 | 0:56:23 | |
Would it give you a feeling of satisfaction | 0:56:23 | 0:56:26 | |
to see the picture returned in some way to its rightful owners? | 0:56:26 | 0:56:30 | |
Oh, 100%. I have no problem with that. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:32 | |
I inherited them. I didn't buy it. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
I was given it as part of the inheritance of my mother. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:39 | |
I had the benefit of looking at it, enjoying it. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:42 | |
If it belongs to somebody else, that person should have it, you know. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:46 | |
So even though the painting is worth £20,000, | 0:56:47 | 0:56:51 | |
20 times more than he thought, Mr Schaary is still willing to give it up. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:56 | |
That's what we've been hoping for since the day we stopped the auction. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:01 | |
We've come a long way since then. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:04 | |
But sadly the chaos left by the Nazis has foiled our attempts | 0:57:04 | 0:57:07 | |
to return the painting to its rightful owner for now. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
Until an agreement can be reached, this painting, like so many others | 0:57:10 | 0:57:14 | |
that were taken in terrible circumstances, will remain locked in limbo. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:19 | |
The thing is, when this all started, it was an unwanted portrait, | 0:57:21 | 0:57:26 | |
for sale at a knockdown price. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:28 | |
I mean, we've come a long way since then. | 0:57:28 | 0:57:30 | |
We've worked out the story of the gallery owners, the picture's dark Nazi past. | 0:57:30 | 0:57:36 | |
And, of course, who painted it. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:38 | |
Isaac De Jouderville - pupil of one of the greatest artists the world has ever seen. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:44 | |
Now it can claim to be within the wider world of Rembrandt. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:48 | |
And actually it's a 300-year-old witness to the great man himself. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:55 | |
It can live and breathe again. | 0:57:55 | 0:57:57 | |
In this series we've looked beyond pictures, into their hidden secrets. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:05 | |
That is very exciting. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:07 | |
We've found paintings that have a past, sometimes thrilling. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:10 | |
We've been looking at him all the time. | 0:58:10 | 0:58:13 | |
That was with the painting? | 0:58:13 | 0:58:15 | |
Sometimes dark. | 0:58:15 | 0:58:16 | |
All art tells a story and it's through these stories that paintings come to life. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:24 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:47 | 0:58:50 | |
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk | 0:58:50 | 0:58:53 |